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Amid mounting criticism, the White House said Wednesday that it plans to soften the deadline for when Americans are required to purchase health insurance. The date by when Americans would be penalized for not having signed up for health insurance could be “slid” back by as much as six weeks, administration officials told NBC News. But it was not immediately clear Wednesday whether the adjustment to a cornerstone of the Affordable Care Act would need to be approved by Congress or could be done by the Department of Health and Human Services administratively. As the law stands now, individuals are...

Illinois "Progressives" (a single word to describe "economically illiterate public union sympathizers") want to pick your pocket once again. The Progressives want to hike the Illinois 2015 top tax rate from 3.75% to a whopping 9%. Moreover the income tax rate will go up on a sliding scale for everyone making over $18,000. Promises, Promises Recall that On the campaign trail in 2010, Gov. Pat Quinn told voters he'd veto any income tax hike that would raise Illinois' rate over 4 percent. That was one of the quickest disclosed tax lies in history. Here are a few snips from my...

General Eric Holder told Congress just last week that “the U.S. is losing the war on arms trafficking.”

On Sunday October 30, 2011, 7:21 pm EDT (Reuters) - Beacon Power Corp filed for bankruptcy on Sunday just a year after the energy storage company received a $43 million loan guarantee from a controversial U.S. Department of Energy program. The move comes about two months after solar panel maker Solyndra also filed for bankruptcy, setting off criticism of the government loan program. The department guaranteed $535 million in loans to Solyndra, and Congress is investigating whether political influence played a role.

What is going on

Now, Social Security is sucking money out of the Treasury. This year, it will add a projected $46 billion to the nation’s budget problems, according to projections by system trustees. Replacing cash lost to a one-year payroll tax holiday will require an additional $105 billion. If the payroll tax break is expanded next year, as President Obama has proposed, Social Security will need an extra $267 billion to pay promised benefits.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- NATO says the 13 people killed when a suicide bomber rammed a military convoy in Kabul included five coalition troops and eight civilian contractors. NATO initially reported that all 13 killed were service members. But after further identification, it confirmed that eight were civilians working for the coalition. A U.S. official says all were Americans, but Canadian defense spokesperson Lt. Col. Christian Lemay told The Associated Press that a Canadian soldier was among the troopers killed. Canadian military officials have not yet released the soldier's identity or further details. The Taliban suicide bomber hit an armored...

President Barack Obama again urged Congress to pass his jobs plan, saying most millionaires “are willing to step up” and pay higher taxes to support it.

Greece wants a solution to its crippling debt that applies to all its sovereign bonds expiring up to 2035, a government source said on Monday, adding that the process should remain voluntary and any deal must include the European Central Bank. This would be a marked expansion from a previous, now defunct, plan agreed by the EU in July, under which Greece's debt burden would be lowered through a bond exchange involving paper maturing up to 2020. "We are looking at the entire Greek debt, expiring through to 2035... It does not stop at 2020 as the previous model did,"...

Testing a re-election theme, President Barack Obama is telling donors during a fundraising rich tour of three western states that the country is suffering from an economic crisis and from a political crisis. "People are crying out for action," he says. Pointing to elements of his $447 billion jobs plan rejected by Republican lawmakers, Obama said they would likely linger as campaign issues in 2012. "This is the fight that we're going to have right now, and I suspect this is the fight that we're going to have to have over the next year," Obama told about 240 donors at...

HENRICO, VA (WWBT) – NBC12 has uncovered one of those stories that makes you think: "How in the world does that happen?!" A truck filled with President Obama's podiums and audio equipment was stolen in Henrico just days before his visit to Chesterfield. We confirmed an investigation with the U.S. Defense Department. There are still a lot of questions. The biggest one being did the thieves intentionally target the President's truck or did they take advantage of a crime of opportunity and give a big "uh-oh" when they saw what was inside. When you see President Obama speak, there is...

First CLASS, What Next? In a Friday bad-news dump that was a whopper even by its own standards, the Obama administration added to the announcement of a near-record annual deficit and an escalation of undeclared war in Uganda the news that the CLASS Act, an ill-conceived adjunct of the Affordable Care Act, is no more. The upshot is this: Obamacare just got a whole lot more expensive than advertised, and there is reason to believe that its Democratic architects have long known this would happen.The Community Living Assistance Services and Support Act was the brainchild of the late senator Edward...

Via SeattleTimes: The 150 Occupy Seattle tents in Westlake Park were taken down by 7:30 Monday morning as Seattle police and Seattle parks employees moved in to clear what the city has long said was illegal camping on city property. Police also arrested nine people. All the tents were down within a half-hour, according to Assistant Police Chief Mike Sanford. The protesters were told to take the tents down. If they didn’t take them down themselves, police or parks employees took them down for them, according to Sanford. Read more and watch Raw Video Clips at post link > http://bit.ly/nKG6Ys

How absurd is the Obama DOE’s explanation for violating the federal law against prioritizing private lenders ahead of taxpayers (i.e., sliding the president’s Solyndra cronies ahead of the public)? As Andrew’s post demonstrates, it is laugh out loud absurd — or at least it would be if the scheme were not so outrageous. Let’s put aside for the moment that, by the administration’s “reasoning,” the public could be robbed on every loan by simply “renegotiating” it 10 seconds after it was finalized. What is truly priceless is the administration’s claim that the law had to be ignored because “investors are...

The Obama administration will not implement a controversial piece of the healthcare reform law, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Friday. Sebelius said the department will not continue trying to implement the CLASS program, which was intended to provide insurance for long-term care. Republicans charged that the program’s financial structure was unsustainable, and Sebelius conceded as much Friday. “We have not identified a way to make CLASS work at this time,” she wrote on the Huffington Post's website. Sebelius said HHS will “suspend” implementation of the program. The department recently reassigned the people it had placed in the...

Jonathan Silver, administrator of the U.S. Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program, is resigning from his post. Until now, Silver was the head of the DOE’s Loan Programs office. That office oversaw the program that gave now-bankrupt Solyndra its $535 million loan guarantee. The transaction left taxpayers on the hook when the company failed. Though President Barack Obama continues to tout solar energy as a boon for the future, Silver’s resignation may signal that key Obama administration officials lack confidence in a strategy of subsidizing loan guarantees for companies in hat Obama calls the “green jobs” economy.

Subcommittee Chairman Stearns made the following statement: “Nearly eight months into our investigation, documents provided to the Committee last Friday confirm those closest to the President - top advisors like Valerie Jarrett, Larry Summers, and Ron Klain - had direct involvement in the Solyndra mess. In addition to the cast of West Wing characters with access to the Oval Office, documents reveal a startlingly cozy relationship between wealthy donors and the President’s confidantes, especially in matters related to Solyndra. While the President claims ‘hindsight is always 20/20’ and the loan went ‘through the regular review process,’ the facts tell a...

Politics: The hippie horde attempting to mob and "occupy" Wall Street this week has a method to its madness. It's all about getting President Obama re-elected by employing classic Alinskyite tactics. At first glance, the latest protests staged by left-wing rent-a-mobs in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and elsewhere don't look terribly different from the World Trade Organization and global debt-amnesty spectaculars of a decade ago. Radicals swarm against some hated totem, chant, break a few Starbucks windows and leave scads of garbage for someone else to clean up. But the "Occupy Wall Street" mob that shut down the Brooklyn...

Media Cover Up: U.S. Government Invokes National Security to Conceal Deal Cut with Mexican Drug Cartel Tuesday, 4. October 2011 Mainstream Media Assists Government in Cloaking Evidence of an Ugly Duplicity in the So-Called Drug War On Saturday, October 1, 2011, investigative journalist Bill Conroy of the Narcosphere reported scandalous and highly troubling new developments in the criminal case against accused Mexican narco-trafficker Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla. The breaking story unravels the U.S. governmentÂ’s ugly national-security interests in the drug war by exposing a quid pro quo deal between the US government and the most powerful international narco-trafficking organization...

(Reuters) - U.S. officials have met members of the Muslim Brotherhood's political party, a U.S. diplomat said, after Washington announced it would have direct contacts with Egypt's biggest Islamist group whose role has grown since U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak was ousted.